The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incidents that occurred two hours apart and impacted about 2,000 customers.

Suddenlink Director of Operations Wendy Purnell said the majority of customers affected by the widespread outages in Big Lagoon, Trinidad, Scotia, Ferndale and parts of McKinleyville and Rio Dell were back online by Friday afternoon.

Lt. Steve Knight said the sheriff's office was notified by a Suddenlink employee at about 10:30 a.m. Friday of the suspected vandalism.

Knight said the investigating deputy reported that the fiber optic line appeared to have been cut in two locations.

The first cut occurred near Grizzly Bluff Road in Ferndale shortly after midnight, and about 24 feet of cable was believed to have been removed from an underground vault at that time, he said.

Knight said the second cut apparently occurred about two hours later at the south end of Scenic Drive in Trinidad, near the southbound U.S. Highway 101 onramp.

Purnell said both of the damaged lines were housed in what were considered to be secure, underground vaults. The damage is estimated at $10,000.

Trinidad resident Katie Darden said her service was restored around 12:30 p.m.

"We are used to periodic power outages, so I didn't think too much of it this morning when I saw the Internet was out," Darden said. "But when I saw that the television channels weren't coming in -- that's when I knew something bigger was going on."

She described the outage as "inconvenient."

"Both my husband and I are used to sitting down in the morning with a cup of coffee and reading the news on the Internet, but it really wasn't that bad," Darden said.

She said her real concern is why someone would want to vandalize and steal Suddenlink's fiber optic line in the first place.

Purnell said she's not aware of a market for fiber optic line.

"I can't speculate as to why someone would do this," she said.

Knight said it's unclear what provoked the incident, but it does appear to be an act of malicious vandalism rather than targeted theft.

"But we don't rule anything out," he said.

The sheriff's office is asking anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity to call the sheriff's office at 445-7251 or the sheriff's office crime tip line at 268-2539.